Methods

A total of 469 patients were enrolled, including 324 with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 28 with HBV-related compensated liver cirrhosis (LC), and 117 with HBV-related decompensated LC. All CHB and compensated LC patients received liver biopsy. Fibrosis grade was assessed using METAVIR score. HBV preS deletion was determined by direct sequencing and verified by clonal sequencing.

Notes

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81572010 and 81373136), and Application Research of Capital Clinical Characteristic and Promotion of Achievements (Z151100004015011), the National Thirteenth Five-Year Special Grand Project for Infectious Diseases (No. 2017ZX10302201-001). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Beijing 302 Hospital. All patients provided their informed consent for the use of their samples for research before enrollment in the Database of Beijing 302 Hospital.

Data sharing statement

Technical appendix, statistical code, and data set are available upon request of the corresponding author Dongping Xu (xudongping302@ sina.com). The information of HBV genetic sequences with preS deletion is freely available from GenBank (KX534108-KX534166). Raw data are available from the Ethics Committee of the Beijing 302 Hospital (Beijing, China) for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential database.